Teachers' Strike Tests Chicago Mayor on the Issues She Ran On

Monica Davey and Mitch Smith

October 18, 2019 11:57 PM

CHICAGO — Lori Lightfoot swept into office as Chicago’s mayor this year promising to end inequities that have long divided the city. She would invest in struggling neighborhoods, she pledged, and put badly needed librarians, nurses and social workers in schools.

Teachers' Strike Tests Chicago Mayor on the Issues She Ran On

Five months later, the mayor has found herself in a thorny spot: Facing off against tens of thousands of striking teachers who are demanding action on some of the very issues she promised to solve.

The teachers’ strike, which has canceled two days of classes for more than 300,000 public school students, is the most significant test so far of Lightfoot’s leadership. Standard strike issues, like pay, have certainly come up, but they have been eclipsed by the Chicago Teachers Union’s calls for more counselors for students, some of whom live amid daily violence; affordable housing for students in a city where home prices have forced residents to move away; and smaller class sizes than the ones some teachers said had swelled well over 30.

Lightfoot, a Democrat whose progressive agenda had won her a stunning sweep of all 50 of Chicago’s wards in April, was suddenly featured in chants outside schools Friday: “Get on the right foot, Lori Lightfoot.”

Stacy Davis Gates, the vice president of the teachers’ union, said this week, alluding to Lightfoot. “This contract has to represent something different for the city of Chicago — it has got to represent something different. And she ran to do that. Period.”

For Lightfoot, a lawyer and parent who cast herself as an outsider when she ran in a crowded race to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel this year, the challenges are complex.

“The fact is, there is no more money,” Lightfoot said Friday morning, after she and her wife handed out Cheerios to a roomful of students who — with no school — were gathered at a community center. In negotiations, the city has offered teachers a 16% raise over five years, while union leaders called for increases of 15% over a shorter three-year term.

Being at the other end of the strike, Lightfoot said, did not mean she had walked away from her overarching goal of ending the sense that there are two Chicagos — divided along lines of race, wealth and neighborhoods.

“I’m a kid who grew up in low-income circumstances, whose parents struggled every single day, and I live those values,” Lightfoot said. ”

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Monica Davey and Mitch Smith